How Brands Can Harness Data to Deliver Amazing Experiences and Engagement

We may have started out in a state where information was mostly contained in PCs but now, thanks to the advance of mobile and the avalanche of mobile apps, information isn’t ‘in’ anything. It is everywhere. Technology is also smart — and going to get a lot smarter — so brands have to get smarter about how they use it to engage their customers.

Already brands including Unilever are tapping the tremendous power of sensors embedded in smartphones to deliver contextually relevant and valuable marketing aligned with conditions such as temperature.

At the other end of the spectrum, marketers are experimenting with sensors to enrich and rethink the shopping experience.

House of Fraser in the U.K. is using beacon technology embedded in mannequins to transmit information to nearby consumers about the clothing on display; C&A in Brazil is using clothing hangers capable of displaying Facebook “likes” on small embedded screens to encourage shoppers to purchase popular fashion items; Sephora in China has taken the wraps on a megastore in Shanghai that features an in-store Fragrance Bar that allows customers to interact with fragrances and then obtain product information directly through the application for their favourite scents.

And the list goes on.

But some brands succeed in going one better, tapping into opportunities at the intersection of the digital sphere and the physical store to create an entirely new kind of customer experience.

In celebration of it’s 25th birthday Magnum, the ice cream brand owned by Unilever, succeeded in doing just that.

It created “the ultimate chocolate and ice cream pleasure destination”, in the form of the Magnum Pleasure Store — a space dedicated to glamour and good taste where fans could craft their own custom Magnum ice creams. Overall, average daily sales grew from 550 units to over 1,000 and a staggering 1,200 custom Magnums were served in just one day.

The pop-up shop in South Africa was a star-studded event, complete with interactive elements that made it possible for consumers to share their experience online. For those who couldn’t make it into the physical store, Magnum created an online experience inviting fans to a fun and original Twitter experience. With every tweet, the Twitter handle swooped in to crack the thick layer around the ice cream like a piñata. When the chocolate coating cracked, that consumer won a prize.

The campaign, which was also received the Smarties Award, resulted in 5,000 Instagram posts, 86 million Twitter impressions, a reach of 10.5 million and a Twitter community growth of 25% — making Magnum one of Twitter’s top 25 brands in South Africa and the top FMCG brand in the country. What’s more, Magnum trended seven times during the campaign.

In Mobile: The Great Connector brand examples like Unilever highlight how leveraging sensors and customer insight is key to achieving the ultimate marketing objective: one-to-one marketing through delivering the right stuff (experience, information, service, offer) to the right individual in the right context (place, time, platform, need-state).

But the eBook also shows how brands and business marketers are harnessing mobile to deliver on the promise of real-time marketing right now. In this scenario mobile—and the insights it provides into consumer context and behaviour — is powering more accurate audience-centered segmentation and driving the use of mobile programmatic.

Mobile programmatic is certainly a mega-trend — and one that rides the tidal wave created by the increasing consumer expectation that mobile (and marketing) will deliver them the answers and services they want, customised precisely for them, in the exact moment that they want and need it.

There are broad implications for brands and businesses.

Marketers will need to design and manage customer experiences to dynamically target their audiences and respond to context. They will also have to map the journey with the consumer in mind.

This means shifting from a focus on static objectives (showing an ad to an audience at a specific moment, for example) and adopting an approach that will allow marketers to evolve with consumer needs and quickly respond with information or assistance that fulfills those needs in the ‘mobile moment’.

Fortunately, these moments are growing exponentially, redefining consumer daily life. The result is an avalanche of micro-moments when marketers and brands, those who have the capabilities to anticipate the cues, can step in to offer assistance, ease friction, improve service, amaze the senses, or just show they ‘care’.

(This article is an excerpted from Mobile: The Great Connector (Volume 2), a comprehensive eBook authored by Peggy Anne Salz, chief analyst and content strategist of MobileGroove, in collaboration with the MMA EMEA and member sponsors Inspired and Brainstorm. Register hereto download your free copy of this essential marketing resource.)